Pitcher-Turned-Law Student On Cheating In Baseball 276
An anonymous reader writes "As a 27-year old minor league pitcher who had never made it to "The Show" (ballplayers' slang for the big leagues), Garrett Broshius was advised by a coach to develop an 'out pitch' by cheating (doctoring or scuffing the baseball while standing on the mound). It was an ethical crossroads faced by many players past and present, and Broshius ultimately decided to give up the game. While a student at the St. Louis University School of Law, he wrote a paper that attempted to apply the tenets of legal theorists to the rampant cheating in baseball and other sports (click the 'download' button, no registration required). While Broshius' paper isn't brilliant or novel, it tours the techniques and issues surrounding cheating in baseball better than most. Broshius concludes with recommendations for how baseball should handle two classes of cheating: 'traditional' cheating of the type he was advised to do by the coach, which has achieved acceptance in some quarters as part of the game; and 'new era' cheating involving performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids, which has become prominent in the last 25 years. Oh, and Brosius remarks that in almost every baseball game he watches these days, he notices something suspicious — usually from the pitcher."
Re:Money (Score:5, Interesting)
The Russians were known to bring a dozen backup grandmasters to sit in a backroom and examine unlikely move combinations in depth. Kind of like a Beowulf cluster of grandmasters.
Re:But thats OK! (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, why do sports and higher education have anything to do with each other?
They don't, at least not in my country. I got my Master's and Ph.D. in the US and was and still am baffled by this. What really bugged me though is that I had to support people's sports hobby with a financial contribution. I thought it would have been better for other students to pay for my scifi-book-reading hobby instead. The bogus argument was that the sports teams were making my university money. If that would have actually been true, why did I have to financially support it then? Also, I never attended a single game in my 5 years at my university. I would have preferred watching paint dry. My degrees are in physics, btw. and I am from Germany. I also think it is disgusting that people get scholarships based on their athletic abilities. Are we still ape men?
Re:But thats OK! (Score:5, Interesting)
Einstein loved sailing and music (was a great violinist), both of which he was avidly involved with in college and said helped him take a break, relax, and focus later on his studies.
Feynman... well, here's one of his most famous quotes: "Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all.”
And Hawking was a coxswain at Oxford. In fact, he has admitted he was somewhat of an academic slacker there, but his extracurricular activities helped him socialize and avoid boredom/depression given he was younger (and smarter) than most of his peers.
I'm pretty sure for almost every brilliant person you could find multiple examples of them having strong interests outside of their academic field. What you call "distractions" most others consider essential to the creative process.
I have a lot of friends who were involved in collegiate athletics - some on scholarship, some not, some actually played professionally later, but most went on to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, bankers, even a couple of PhDs. I know my experience probably wasn't typical these days, but it is still common at many highly selective successful private universities. Athletics, music, and other non-academic activities have been a integral part of advanced education from ancient Greece and Rome through the Renaissance in Europe and the Enlightenment extending to America. This isn't some recent modern development.
Re:But thats OK! (Score:4, Interesting)
On the one hand, it is unfortunate that these kids are being ripped off.
On the other hand, why are they pursuing athletic careers at academic institutions?
Because despite what you seem to think, 95%+ of college athletes do not go on to play professional sports, but go into the working world like everyone else. It's not a career for the vast majority, it's an extracurricular activity they love and have been doing since they were little kids. And if they studied and committed themselves in college (as many do, again despite what you think), they come out with a bachelor's degree.
My objection is that athletes that have no interest in higher education are forced into academic pursuits (necessarily displacing others, assuming full enrollment) as a part of their career track. This makes about as much sense as forcing software developers through MLB in order to be employable. In my eyes it's idiotic, but it's possible that I'm just not seeing the logic. I've been asking repeatedly for someone to state in clear and understandable terms why this seemingly absurd system is in society's best interest. I haven't gotten a satisfactory response yet.
Your basic problem here (and the reason no one has given you a "satisfactory response") is that your assumptions are just wrong to start, so there is no response that would make sense to you. You are making an incorrect and stereotypical assumption that all college athletes are on some professional sports career track and don't study or benefit from a college education (or could even be as smart or smarter than non-athletes).
As a personal example (maybe not *typical*, but also far from *unique*), my freshman roommate was on full scholarship for football and actually was one of the lucky few who drafted into the NFL, playing for a few years. He also had a 1300 SAT, an BA in economics, and is now very successful in a completely non-football related business. He's a smart guy, who has used and enjoyed both his athletic and academic abilities. What's wrong with that?
Or if you want the purely numerical reason why it's in the *schools'* best interest (and to some extent students and taxpayers funding the school) - well, I already went over this in detail in another post, but here's the short summary of an example: UTexas football made $133M last year and paid their players $5M in scholarships; after all expenses they made over $90M for the school. An average NFL team makes about $250M a year and pays their players about $125M in salary. The equivalent (~50% revenue to players) for UT would then be about $500K per player, or an extra $60M over what they pay in scholarships. Instead that $60M is part of the $90M going to other school programs and expenses. Even paying the players salaries commensurate with professional programs (which won't happen, though paying something more might) nets the school $30M. The schools in the NCAA just aren't going to walk away from that. Sure, it's largely about money, but what in education, government, business, etc isn't these days? That answer may not be satisfactory to you, but it's the truth...